Optimal Structure for Forum Thread URL

[PatrickGriffith]

For getting forum threads ranked, which is best and why?

• site.com**/topic/**thread-title-goes-here
• site.com**/t/**thread-title-goes-here
• site.com**/**thread-title-goes-here

I'd take comfort in knowing that SEOmoz uses the middle version, except that "q" is more meaningful to a human than "t".  The last option seems like the best bet overall, except that users could potentially steal urls that I may want to use in the future.

My old structure was site.com/forum/topic/TOPIC_ID-thread-title-goes-here so obviously any of those would be a vast improvement, but I might as well make the best choice now so I only have to change once.

[William.Lau]

I would go with first one, more keywords for search engine to identify. I think majority would say the same, it is just more friendly for search engines.

[PatrickGriffith]

Sorry, I should have added that the word "topic" is the actual word that's being used.  It's not a placeholder for the name of a topic.  So it has no keyword value.

Does that change your answer?

[William.Lau]

Haha, Yes it does.

I'm not sure what you are using but vBulletin had that option. Having topic as the category would be better, but if its not doable the 3rd would be best.

That is strange Topic is Topic though. What platform are you using?

[PatrickGriffith]

It's a forum I built myself.  I could easily make the "topic" the name of a category instead, I had just never thought of that approach.

[William.Lau]

I suggest using that. Would give you better rankings for that topic and then some juice can go to your threads.